Google Home Mini review—A gateway drug for the Google Assistant

A great starter kit for newbies, if you can stand the lack of good music playback.

Update: Earlier this week on October 11, we reviewed the new Google Home Mini—the company's entry point into its voice-controlled home assistant ecosystem. After some early users noted the device recording more than it should, Google has officially disabled its center touch point forever (in what seems like a minor disaster). As such, we've added this note to our original review, which otherwise appears unchanged below.

The Google Home Mini. Usually the lights are white, but catch it on boot up and you can get this particularly Googley picture.

Ron Amadeo

Here it is with the standard white lights.

Ron Amadeo

The mute switch. This is "on."

Ron Amadeo

Turn off the microphone and you'll expose this blazing orange switch section.

Ron Amadeo

The bottom has more orange, and see that little circle on the bottom? That's a reset button.

Ron Amadeo

Doesn't it look like a sock? It looks like a sock.

Ron Amadeo

The power plug is micro USB.

Ron Amadeo

How much can you slice away from a Google Home and have it still be good? That was the question asked of Google's hardware team when it created the Google Home Mini, a device that slashes the $129 Google Home down to a mere $50. The result is a smaller, cheaper, simpler device that still has all the Google Assistant smarts of its bigger brother without a speaker system capable of pumping out decent-sounding music. If you've ever wondered if this voice command stuff would work in your house and need a test device, Google is hoping you'll take a gamble on this cheap little device.

Further Reading

Most of the features we covered in the original Google Home review still apply. The Home Mini still has an incredible mesh hotword system, seamlessly creating a Star Trek-like voice command network with other Google Homes and Android devices. A shout of "OK Google" and the Google Home hivemind will instantly identify the closest device to you and singularly answer you on that device. You still manage it through the Google Home app. It still has a bunch of voice commands. In this review, we're mainly looking at the hardware, so let's dive in!

The hardware

The design of the Google Home Mini is kind of cute. It's a small circle that's 3.86-inches (98mm) in diameter and 1.65-inches (42mm) tall. The top is covered in a woven cloth material, while the bottom half is plastic with a big rubber foot. It looks like someone stuck a donut inside a sock. Since the Google Home Mini looks like a piece of laundry or a couch cushion, it blends in to a home environment much easier than the white plastic obelisk that is the original Google Home.

Under the stock fabric is a set of four lights, which work just like the ones on the big Google Home. This is a step down from the Google Home's 11 lights, but hey, we're trying to cut costs here. The lights will turn on when the Google Home is talking or listening to you, and they also indicate the volume level (1 to 4) when you adjust the volume. The lights are RGB LEDs, but mostly they're content to stay their default hue of white.

The top surface is touch sensitive. Tapping on the left and right (the "front" is opposite the power cord) changes the volume. Tapping the center will pause or play the currently loaded music, and long-pressing the center will start the listening mode as an alternative to saying "OK Google." Currently, this is disabled because at least one Google Home Mini shipped with a defective touch surface, which caused it to accidentally record a lot more than it should.

On the back of the device you'll find the power cord, along with a physical "mute microphone" switch that you can move left and right. Sliding the mute switch to the right will turn off the mini's microphone, exposing a bright orange layer under the switch and turning the four lights orange. A physical switch is an odd choice, since you can also mute Google Home by voice. This means you can cause the switch to be out of sync with the actual mute state.

Google's hardware division is all over the place when it comes to the power plugs for its devices. The Google Wi-Fi, released last year, was a welcome surprise with a USB-C port just for power. Given Google's pioneering work with USB-C in products like the Chromebook Pixel 2 and Nexus/Pixel Phone line, Google seemed like it was going to push this reversible plug standard to everything. The original Google Home was an outlier, with a coaxial DC power jack, but since it was developed around the same time as the Google WiFi, you could assume that maybe the USB-C revolution just didn't make it in time. A year later, the new Google Home Mini is at a weird halfway point, using an old-school micro USB port for power. What the plug is doesn't really matter, given that you probably won't ever lose the Mini's power cord and need to replace it. But it's an example of Google Hardware lacking uniformity.

On the bottom of the Mini, you'll find a bright orange rubber foot with a "G" logo stamped into it. The foot serves to firmly anchor the Mini to whatever you stick it on, but it also has a hidden little button on the bottom. If you hold it down, you'll factory-reset the Mini.

Google Home, now without its best feature

The other big thing to go on the Mini is the sound. When Google introduced Google Home last year, the company definitely seemed to take a "minimum viable product" approach to launching the device. Google Home generally felt unfinished and couldn't do many of the things that we had come to expect from Google's voice command system, but the one thing it could do well was music. Multiple Google Homes could be placed around your house and connected together, and they would accomplish the surprisingly difficult task of playing seamless music throughout your house.

It seemed like "good music playback" was the minimum viable product for Google Home at launch, and now, a year later, Google is launching a Google Home device that isn't meant for music playback. The Mini can play back music—it just really shouldn't. The Google Home Mini only has a single 40mm driver, and while it gets fairly loud, the bass is non-existent, the highs are clipped, and it's just overall an unpleasant speaker for music.

Google also describes the Mini as a "360-degree speaker," but what Google actually means is that the speaker points straight up. The point is, the Mini isn't any good at playing music. It seems tuned for voice and voice only, which is fine for hearing command affirmations and the weather report.

What do you do with a Google Home that shouldn't play music, though? Should you add the Mini to the Google Home speaker group and have a low-quality speaker blaring away when you're playing music? After a few test runs, I chose to remove it from the music speaker group, because it just sounds bad. As someone who's a fan of the whole-home music idea, this makes finding a place for the Google Home Mini in my house difficult. I ask myself the question, "Where do I want voice commands, but not music?" and I can't come up with a spot that fits that description. I feel like the Home Mini is nice if you're experimenting or on a budget, but if you care about music, there's little reason to get a mini if you can afford a full-sized Google Home.

If you want to buy a $35 Chromecast Audio along with your $50 Google Home Mini, you can use the Mini as a "smart bridge" for a real speaker system. This seems like the use case in which the Mini shines brightest. You get to keep the music playback while not using the Mini's crappy speaker. The Amazon Echo Dot has the same idea, but since it uses a good, old-fashioned 3.5mm jack, you can hook up a speaker without the need for an expensive dongle and yet another power plug. It's a shame the Mini can't do the same.

So what’s left other than music?

Any time I talk to someone considering a Google Home, I ask them "What do you think you'll use it for?" If you can't immediately come up with a specific answer to that question, you're probably not going to find a ton of use once you set it up. Right now, I would rank Google Home's best use cases thusly:

Music—Great sound. An awesome, easy way to get perfectly synced music in every room, which is a nightmare with regular audio equipment. This is not really an option for the Home Mini.

Smart Home control—Great for turning lights on and off, controlling dimmers, and adjusting HVAC. You'll need lots of expensive smart home equipment to make this work. The coming "routine" features will make this even better.

Reminders—You can now finally tell Google Home to remind you of something, and it will do it.

Phone Calls—It works as a speaker phone now. You can dial contacts or businesses.

Finding your stuff—Google Home can now ring your smartphone when you need it. The Bluetooth beacon company Tile also has Google Assistant integration, so you can find stuff besides your phone (like your car keys), too.

Asking questions—The answers to random trivia, unit conversions, and the weather report are just a question away.

That's about it for now. Does that sound like enough functionality to bring yet another device into your home? Is it enough to make you want to put a Mini in every room, the way the small price point and mesh hotword capabilities suggest? The Google Home always felt like a cool speaker system with some extra smarts thrown in. With the main speaker functionality gone in the Mini, you're left with the "extra smarts," and I'm not sure those features are enough to feel like a fully formed product.

The good news is that the Google Home is a whole lot better this year than it was last year. Google doesn't always support its products after launch, but with Google Home, the company seems committed to building a serious voice command ecosystem. While it still feels like an early adopter project, Home has been steadily improving all year.

In a later article, we plan on digging through all the additions made to Google Home over the year for a full re-review. But, for now, we can offer a quick rundown. This year Google Home added the ability to distinguish users by voice using its "Voice Match" technology. It added calendar-event creation, reminders, and reminder-notification support. You can make phone calls and even spoof caller ID with a Project Fi number. Home can read out cooking recipes. It can ring your phone. There's also a growing world of third-party apps that can start your robotic vacuum cleaner, write up an IFTTT recipe, or call an Uber.

Further Reading

There are still a million-and-one edge cases where the Google Home frustrates. Google ruined the shopping list functionality by killing the excellent Google Keep integration and turning the shopping list into a big Google Express ad, and it is still awful. Podcast support is still a janky custom Google Home solution and not based on Google Music's podcast subscriptions. Music and the hotword mesh across devices, but things like alarms and timers don't, so an alarm triggered on one Google Home can't be silenced on a different Google Home. The app has a feature called "Shortcuts," which is supposed to let you assign a custom phrase to an action, but it flat-out doesn't work.

Last month, Google sent an update to all Google Home users that required them to blow up their smart home settings and relink their devices to the Google Assistant. Google Home still feels like an early adopter product that isn't finished.

At the launch of the Home Mini, Google announced a few features coming to Google Home in the future, too. "Routines" will allow you to program big macros into Google Home, so a single command like "Good night" could lock up the house, turn off the lights, lower the thermostat, read you tomorrow's agenda, and (seriously) read you a bedtime story. "Broadcasts" will allow you to send a message to all the Google Homes in a household, sort of like an intercom system. Google is also working on a bigger hardware ecosystem, with its own $400 Google Home Max on the way and a slew of third-party devices coming next year.

A gateway drug to Google voice commands

Google

The Google Home Mini primarily serves as an easy entry point for a Google voice command system. It's $50, and you can just plug it in, and it will work. You don't have to buy a new $800 smartphone or a heavier $129 box. Google seems happy to give them away like candy, offering free Minis to anyone that buys a Pixel 2 or a $25 credit if you buy a Mini from Walmart using Google Express. I suspect Google will try to shovel these things at users as much as possible as a gateway drug into the Google Assistant ecosystem.

I have a hard time believing the Mini will ever stop feeling like a starter product, though. The device, which grew out of the Chromecast team, has such deep roots in media that it feels like sacrilege to have one without a decent speaker. I feel like the Mini is a good "test" device for those looking to dip their toes in the world of Google voice command products, but if you decide you like it, eventually the Mini will be relegated to a dusty closet and replaced with a bigger Google Home. Unless, of course, you also plan to buy a Chromecast Audio and will use an existing speaker system. Then a Mini or two for your existing setups seems like a great option.

A cheap gateway product into Google's voice ecosystem is important to have, and the Mini serves that purpose perfectly. I'm not sure I would ever fill a house with Minis, though. It's called a "Mini" for a reason—this is the small one you're not meant to use for the full Google Home experience.

Tethering to a Chromecast Audio is nice for those with bigger speakers, but a wired option would be nice, too.

Plenty of upgrades to the software were made in the past year.

The Bad

Google Home still feels like an early adopter product.

Music was the Google Home's best feature, and this doesn't really work with music.

The Ugly

The sound the speaker pumps out.

Ron Amadeo
Ron is the Reviews Editor at Ars Technica, where he specializes in Android OS and Google products. He is always on the hunt for a new gadget and loves to rip things apart to see how they work. Emailron@arstechnica.com//Twitter@RonAmadeo

Is there any reason my phone couldn't fulfill all these functions without me having to buy a fifty dollar device and walk into a particular room? Seems rather pointless.

It's doubtful your phone has the kind of microphone array that are in the mini (or any of the other assistant appliances).

The thing I can't get over is mini-USB, who the heck has a mini cord around, everything has moved to micro in the last 5-6 years since the EU regulation incorporated it as the standard connector in 2010.

*edit*Ah, yeah it's micro, was going by the text, didn't really look at the photo closely.

A physical switch is an odd choice, since you can also mute Google Home by voice. This means you can cause the switch to be out of sync with the actual mute state.

Yeah, it's a terrible idea from a UX perspective. The physical switch should be the *only* way to mute the device. That way users would have a consistent indicator of whether google is uploading everything they say

Hmm, shortcuts work fine for me. I have the shortcut "rock me outside" that performs "Play Jackie Grad Party from Google Play Music on Outside Group" and a few more. They all work. What doesn't work for you in Shortcuts Ron?

When Google introduced Google Home last year, the company definitely seemed to take a "minimum viable product" approach to launching the device. Google Home generally felt unfinished and couldn't do many of things that we had come to expect from Google's voice command system, but the one thing it could do well was music.

Really?

Sure, it's better audio than what comes out your phone and laptop. It's probably even better than those battery-operated Bluetooth speakers they sell for $40-50. But not by much.

It's just all midrange. Clipped highs. No real bass. I'd happily listen to the news or an audiobook through it. But music? No thanks.

Hmm, shortcuts work fine for me. I have the shortcut "rock me outside" that performs "Play Jackie Grad Party from Google Play Music on Outside Group" and a few more. They all work. What doesn't work for you in Shortcuts Ron?

Yeah, they work fine for me too. Google could make them more prominent instead of hiding them fairly deep in a menu, but otherwise I've got no complaints.

I use my two Dots to set timers for my kid (5 minutes until we brush your teeth, etc) and play music. That's it. It helps that I have both of them hooked up to spare computer speakers. But not a single other skill or use has proven to be of lasting value. Maybe if I had smart home stuff.

And for the most part, I find most personal assistant stuff to be faster, more useful, and more accurate on my phone and watch.

At the same time, I find music and timers to be worth $50 (as low as $30 if you check Amazon Warehouse Deals).

I just went all in on the Google Home / Nest Thermostat E / Wemo Mini Plug smarthome setup. It really is nice to have voice control, even if for only a few small parts of my life. The way I am using Google Home to voice control things ...

- Wemo Mini Plug to turn on and off a few of my most used lights. Basically a glorified "Clapper", though surprisingly a great convenience. Also for remote control when out of town, or setting up schedules. They also link up to Nest to automatically turn off when I am not hone if I accidentally left them on. I also plan on getting a Wemo wall switch to automatically control my front porch/flood lights.

- Nest Thermostat E - voice control from the couch to quickly cool the house down; and remotely control when out of town.

- YouTube / Netflix / Play Music / Tunein - I can easily control all of these through voice control. This is especially cool being able to walk in from work and tell Googs to play me some music, or a podcast, or a video. Video playback controls like pause, resume, skip, volume control, etc are especially convenient when you have greasy fingers, cooking, or needing to take a bathroom break. Voice control works for turning and off the TV too. Though too bad i can't get it to turn on my Receiver for my surround sound. I actually have to press the power button on that one ... oh the horror!!

I am really looking forward to learning about setting up Shortcuts and Routines.

A cheap gateway product into Google's voice ecosystem is important to have...

I'm completely unaware of any importance this device (or any such devices) might have for anyone unless one is so totally immersed in the Google (or other maker's) ecosphere that their survival is in some way (directly or indirectly) threatened by not having it.

I mean, I get it that people like these things and want these things, but "important to have" implies that one NEEDS these things, and I'm really unsure how that might be, given the information I've thus far read about them.

Liking and wanting are just fine, since people can like and want and get all they want to, and I'm not questioning that nor am I dissing those who do. I also get the convenience factor of shouting at a device from across the room and having it do things instead of stirring one's self to pick up a remote of some kind to do the same thing. I'd love a device that makes my cat STFU in the middle of the night with a shout or two instead of grabbing the squirt bottle. "Okay Google, squirt the fucking cat" is something I'd pay money to be able to do.

But that's convenience.

It's a failure to understand how having one of these things is actually "important". Convenience isn't important. If it was, cavemen would have had RV's.

I'm already invested in the Sonos ecosystem, so I don't really want a multiroom speaker from Google. I'm looking forward to hearing how well Google Home integrates with the existing "dumb" Sonos speakers, which I hear will happen in 2018. If it's actually functional, a Google Home Mini seems much more attractive than the costlier Google Home.

Hmm, shortcuts work fine for me. I have the shortcut "rock me outside" that performs "Play Jackie Grad Party from Google Play Music on Outside Group" and a few more. They all work. What doesn't work for you in Shortcuts Ron?

My shortcuts get back "sorry, I'm not sure how to help with that yet."

Not being able to connect to speakers using bluetooth as the echo dot can is a big miss in my opinion. I love my echo dot, but from what I read, google home/mini is better at answering general questions, so I was thinking of picking one up to try out that aspect.

I guess if asking for a 3.5mm jack on a $700 smartphone is too much, then asking for it on a $50 device is just unacceptable. =\

Why are you obsessed with 40 year old analogy input like a headphone jack? Headphone jacks were created for Morse code radios for fucks sake. Its time to move on. Digital inputs like microusb and lightning are better audio quality anyways... Get over it and have fun with your adapter

Is there any reason my phone couldn't fulfill all these functions without me having to buy a fifty dollar device and walk into a particular room? Seems rather pointless.

No there's not, its useless junk for consumers kind of like fire tv sticks and chromecast sticks that do the same thing as $2 HDMI cables but cost $30-$50 .... -also Google needs more mics around your home to spy on you. They were recently caught rogue with this mini device recording 24/7.

Last time I checked speakers and my ears aren't digital. But heaven help us if an audio output device supports analog output to an analog device to an analog transmission medium (sound) to be picked up by an analog collection device

I guess if asking for a 3.5mm jack on a $700 smartphone is too much, then asking for it on a $50 device is just unacceptable. =\

Why are you obsessed with 40 year old analogy input like a headphone jack?

Universal compatibility. Just because something is old doesn't mean it's bad.

The adapters make the headphone compatible so that argument is void. Compatible doesn't mean what you think it means. And it is bad because it's worse technology, kind of like vhs to dvd. Digital audio input like microusb will sound better. Period

Compatibility without an adapter is better than compatibility with an adapter.

When you can tell the quality difference you believe is there in a double blind test, come back to me.

I guess if asking for a 3.5mm jack on a $700 smartphone is too much, then asking for it on a $50 device is just unacceptable. =\

Why are you obsessed with 40 year old analogy input like a headphone jack? Headphone jacks were created for Morse code radios for fucks sake. Its time to move on. Digital inputs like microusb and lightning are better audio quality anyways... Get over it and have fun with your adapter

Yeah, well the Home Mini has no audio port, when 3.5mm would've been dirt-cheap to throw in. USB-C, not so much. They couldn't even afford one USB-C port for power, much less two.

If I were inclined to invest in it, I'd think the most obvious use case would be controlling my various Chromecast Audios. Why would I want the shitty sound from a little plastic plinth (the original Google Home) when I could fire up the much higher quality speakers in my office, garage, bedroom, and/or the 5.1 setup in my living room?

Bonus if it could follow me around during a phone conversation. I do like to amble about, and not having to carry my phone with me would be neat.

I'd hope that eventually it'll get a built-in intercom function. Not so useful for me, but it'd be invaluable for my parents.

The primary purpose of this device is pretty obvious: stop people from buying Echo Dot and getting in bed with Alexa instead of Google.

You forgot to mention another semi-popular use for these things: voice control TV watching. You ask where we should put one in the house? How about in the room where you keep your primary TV, which should already be connected to a killer sound system not called Home?

I use my two Dots to set timers for my kid (5 minutes until we brush your teeth, etc) and play music. That's it. It helps that I have both of them hooked up to spare computer speakers. But not a single other skill or use has proven to be of lasting value. Maybe if I had smart home stuff.

And for the most part, I find most personal assistant stuff to be faster, more useful, and more accurate on my phone and watch.

At the same time, I find music and timers to be worth $50 (as low as $30 if you check Amazon Warehouse Deals).

We have dots in almost every room. Several of them were gifts... That said, even though they aren’t great in audio quality, it’s nice to set timers or listen to music everywhere. Ours do sync with our Nest, but we rarely touch it since it’s already set on a cycle we like. We have some cool apps on them, but it’s very niche. Like bird song quizzes (my wife and I are birders) or random facts. Oh and I do like it as an alarm...with my phone as a backup in case we lose power...

How would you say the sound quality compares to a small Bluetooth speaker like the 808 CANZ?

I mean are we saying the Google Home Mini is a generic design failure on Google's part or were they just bumping up against the laws of physics with size a price? The CANZ sells for under $20 and includes a battery. Surely Google could have created something with equivalent sound quality within budget, unless they didn't even try.

I guess if asking for a 3.5mm jack on a $700 smartphone is too much, then asking for it on a $50 device is just unacceptable. =\

Why are you obsessed with 40 year old analogy input like a headphone jack? Headphone jacks were created for Morse code radios for fucks sake. Its time to move on. Digital inputs like microusb and lightning are better audio quality anyways... Get over it and have fun with your adapter

Yeah, well the Home Mini has no audio port, when 3.5mm would've been dirt-cheap to throw in. USB-C, not so much. They couldn't even afford one USB-C port for power, much less two.

Exactly. I'm not commenting on phone ports here, I'm saying this makes the Echo Dot a much better choice in this specific market.

From a consumer point of view it looks that way, but from a Google point of view it was probably necessary to get the meshed network of Chromecast devices to work properly. Put one BT speaker in the mix, which Home can't control directly, risks messing up Google's ability to do multi-room audio and other fancy stuff.

In other words, it was deliberately removed so Chromecast can work better. If you aren't on board the Chromecast train though, well, no benefit for you obviously, but as a big fan of Chromecast Audio I think long term it was the right move.